


Cry unto God for Harry, for England, and for George

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: Antihero! Jane Boleyn, Classical References, F/M, Revenge, This is a pro-Boleyn story so if ya dont like anne you might not like this, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, also Jane is Not A Fan of Cromwell so Cromwell stans might not like this either, the Reformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23155393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: Every Fury was once a Grace, and Jane Boleyn has no intention of going gently into the King's good night.
Relationships: Anne Boleyn/Jane Parker Boleyn Lady Rochford, George Boleyn/Jane Parker Boleyn Lady Rochford
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	Cry unto God for Harry, for England, and for George

**Author's Note:**

> OK first things first this is historical /fiction/ not historical /fact/. I have done some research for this story and tried to keep it as accurate as possible but where the situations and motives are ambiguous I have chosen the most Dramatic interpretation, not the Correct one. There were too many delicious parallels and ironies with this idea, i simply had to continue! I haven't read Julia Fox's biography of Jane, but apparently it's very good.  
> I did read ODNB articles for this, and I must say I found the ODNB article for Jane very disappointing. There's no evidence that the Boleyn gal pals ever dressed up as the 3 Graces, I made that up myself. *Marge Simpson voice* I just think they're neat! Obvs this story is going to be biased, it's Jane's 3rd person POV. This ain't Wolf Hall, chief.

Come a little closer, this is not for passing ears. The innocent fall, the traitors climb higher. The blossoms wilt while the thorns sharpen. The tomb grows as the flesh rots. The rose shreds his own petals. 

_The king and the land are one._ Jane remembers that tale well, the Fisher King who can bear no children. It does not trouble her dreams. She is young. She dreams of Enide, of Maledisant, Lyonesse and Lynette. She learns the hymns and hums them while her father and her brother bicker over reform. She dances with her sister, corrects her steps. 

“You will be an ornament to the court,” her mother promises, “a jewel like you should have a rich setting.” Jane’s face is burnished with pride, and she practices until each movement, word and glance hides the time and skill she gave to it. She obeys her Father, her Holy Father, her Heavenly Father. The three are in accord that she should marry George Boleyn, and so is the king. 

She doesn’t know George well, but he’s as handsome as she is beautiful, so it’s a start to be thankful for. There’s no false modesty when they meet, looking each other up and down, reflecting the other’s approval. They suit each other like the King and Queen of Diamonds. Even their names echo each other, George, Jane; Jane, George; a man, a woman: a woman, a man. They play off each other for the king’s amusement, Jane sets up the joke and George gives the punchline. Jane calls and George answers. 

Jane is threaded through his life now, a trinity with his two sisters. George always smiles when he sees them all together, calls them the three _charites_ , after the daughters of Zeus. They like the moniker, and dress as them for their own amusement: Mary as Thalia, Jane as Euphrosyne, Anne as Aglaea. Anne is the one at the centre. It’s Anne who is the sun, the morning star, the evening star, the North Star. Jane and Mary flank her. They dance until they are bright and breathless, slipping off their damp shoes and falling onto Jane’s bed. Whirled loose, their hair spills and threads together on her counterpane, blonde into black into red; as if a silkwoman had tossed her bundle onto it. 

In her heart of hearts, Jane finds it difficult to distinguish her Methuselahs from her Melchisedeks and her Jeroboams from her Jephthahs. Those long lists of names make her mind wander. She prefers a troubadour to a treatise, but Anne brings a light to everything she touches, so Jane keeps abreast as they walk abreast. “George’s sermons are like poetry, and his poetry is like a sermon,” Anne jokes. Jane listens to both. 

Coronation day is upon them, Jane rides behind Anne; and nothing has ever suited her so well. _This must be how the apostles felt, when they found each other._ This is all her mother promised her. Cousin to the king, sister to the queen, this is the sphere her star was created for. The night is beautiful, the days have promise.

One night, in the raw moments before sleep, George asks her why she is so cautious. He has no difficulty in cultivating a character of frankness, but Jane keeps her cards close to her chest, clutching them tightly. Jane does not know herself. She tells him it is her nature.

Natural or unnatural, she does not evade every trap. Her scheme to rid Anne of a rival is laid bare, and she is banished for it. It is for the king to decide who is at his court, not Viscountess Rochford. Exile is tedious, not terrifying. She has George’s letters to amuse her. She knows Anne can bring her back.

“The king is unmanned,” Anne whispers to her, more softly than if Jane were an illicit lover. 

For the first time, Jane falters.   
She knew the danger, but she knew God too. Anne is the handmaid of the Lord, how could she have no son? George is the champion of the true faith, how could he be brought low? Is it part of the divine plan? Is it a test of faith? Is it punishment? _Is it my fault?_

Jane thought the four of them were stars, but they were only tapers, and they cannot burn for long. _We have a chance, we have time, God is testing us. Anne has only conceived four times. Catherine conceived seven times before she was set aside, and she was older then than Anne is now._

Her flame is guttering. Jane learns the truth too late. Cromwell does not believe in a task half done. The fall of George means the fall of Anne, the fall of Anne means the fall of George. George, Anne; Anne, George; a man, a woman: a woman, a man. They are bound by blood, so they are bound for the Tower. He turns their devotion into sin, their unity into conspiracy, destroys them by their own strength. He kills them by their own weapons. He takes their fire and shows them ashes.

Friends scatter at the glint of an axe, but Jane would rather set her own estates on fire than prove herself a coward. _Husband, I wish you well she writes, I do not rest but at your will. I will beg the king, until you are at my side again._ She tries to think of more to say, but that is all. When he was in France, she wrote sheets upon sheets, but now her pen is dry.

The falcon is dead, the turtle doves weep. Anne is gone, who was the sun, the morning star, the evening star, the North star. The night is no longer beautiful. The days have no promise. Jane wants to crawl into her bed and shut the curtains, shrouding herself in a tomb of cloth. The king keeps her bed for himself. Jane imagines him, slumbering peacefully in her bed, in George’s bed, in the bed she fell onto heady with joy, wiping his greasy mouth on her pillow and clutching her sheets with bloody hands. 

The picture makes her want to claw his eyes out. 

She’s almost grateful to her father-in-law. Fighting him for her money brings her a crumb of victory. Jane performs her old self. She is cousin to a king; the same blood flows in their veins, the same ancestors formed their bones. No man may vaunt himself over her. 

(She regrets not paying as much attention to Mary as she did to Anne. Mary is all that’s left now, but she wants to live in the country and never ever see anyone connected to court again, if she can help it. Jane doesn’t understand. Jane calls and there is no answer.)

The Pilgrimage of Grace rises; and Cromwell grips his chair until his knuckles turn pale as bare bone. In that moment Jane wonders what she would do if she had an army. 

Jane gets her bed back.

For the first time that she can remember, the king has no queen. The court feels emptier, somehow. Rudderless. _The king and the land are one, and the land is rotting._

A new queen crosses the sea and Jane could almost laugh, after everything, at how little she knows. _I do believe her majesty is a maid still!_

In the fog of dawn, Jane finds herself questioning the other Jane. If the king was unmanned with Anne before her; and Anne after her, just how _was_ Edward conceived? _Oh Lord, let him be a bastard._ She finds the idea amusing. It makes her think of the Greek heroes, who caused their doom by trying to avoid it. 

Cromwell dies pleading for _mercy mercy mercy_. 

It’s not enough, it can’t be enough. It feels like crushing a fly while the cannibal lives on, merrily eating. Jane dreams of Judith, swathed in finery. She dreams of her colours and her jewels. She dreams of Judith slaying Holofernes. She looks at the new little queen, the new Catherine. Catherine, Anne; Anne, Catherine. 

_Was every Fury once a Grace?_ Anne would know. 

Jane keeps her cards close to her chest. She is ready to gamble. The queen is lost, and dreams of love. A sweet little fool, but a useful one. Jane lives again. A fallen star is still made of fire. Catherine scolds Jane for leaving her alone with Culpeper. Jane has little desire to listen. She is a woman of the world, Catherine is only a girl. She dreams of love. Jane dreams of Judith. Only Judith. 

The trap is sprung before she wakes. 

I will never reveal the truth, she promises. To be torn with wild horses. They can still survive. _We have a chance, we have time._ It’s not a crime to lie with a queen years before she could have lain with a king and borne a prince, to lie with a queen when no-one could ever have known she would become a queen. So long as they all sing the same song, then no-one need ever know of this hidden revenge. If they just hold the line, they can escape with an annulment. If Jane can survive a husband tainted by incest, Catherine can survive a lost maidenhead. 

She prays to see Anne and George in her dreams again, though even dreaming she knows they’re dead. It would be enough, to see their faces again. There is no justice in Jane’s dreams now. Only an axe. Jane screams to everyone and no-one.

There are no torturers in her cell at the Tower, only her thoughts. Anne cannot bring her back.   
_The king is in agony every day. God has already punished him for his sins. Now he is punishing me. Punishing me for what I have done and told myself was His justice._ Her father sends no word. The Holy Father is the Bishop of Rome. God is her only father now. _It makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company,_ her mind whispers every night. _This is my fault. I didn’t hurt the king, I hurt her, who was kind and gentle and lonely. I should have protected her. I should have strangled Culpeper with my bare hands before he ever came near Catherine. I should have silenced Dereham myself. It would not have been a sin, if I did it to protect her. I thought I was Judith slaying Holofernes, but all along I was Medea, killing my brother for_ nothing. _It makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company, it makes my heart die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company, it makes my heart die and die and die._

Jane learns the truth too late. _I’m powerless. I always was._ She has never felt a truth she hated so much. 

The last day is here. Welcome it. The storm has passed, there is only calm. There is no fire, but a few wisps of smoke and then sky. The axe is her friend; one caress and he will bring her back to George and Anne. Nothing feels real but her three thoughts, moving as steady as a galley’s drumbeat, as constant as a heartbeat, as practiced as three dancers. _The King shall not have my tears. The King shall not have my fear. I give my fear to God, and my tears are for the dead and the dead alone. The King shall not have my tears. The King shall not have my fear. I give my fear to God, and my tears are for the dead and the dead alone. The King shall not have my tears. The King shall not have my fear. I give my fear to G-_

**Author's Note:**

> Btw the whole X, Y; Y, X, a man, a woman; a woman, a man format is taken from I think Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan: "Tristan, Isolde; Isolde, Tristan; A man, a woman: a woman, a man."


End file.
